Month: January 2017

It’s out there right now. Hiding where you least expect to find it. It’s the silent business killer. It’s Complacency.

It happens every day to small and big businesses. And it cares only of the cold, hard reality that while you were satisfied somebody else was not.

So don’t wait for your if only. Avoid complacency always. Avoiding complacency is essential to any business’s long-term longevity. Here’s how you avoid it:

1. Listen for fresh ideas

Think you know it all? Wrong. Anyone who does will fall to the complacency bug. For in the end if you are too busy patting yourself on the back or resting, you can’t hear the next great idea which may not even come from you.

2. You can always do better

If you ever get to the point where you say it is 100% perfect the way that it is, you’re not looking hard enough. Be proud of what you provide to your clients. But staying out in front is about challenging yourself to find more qualified clients, to provide better service, and to always strive to do better.

3. Look in the rear view mirror

When you’re doing well, it is often difficult to see what’s been going on around you. Evaluate everything. Keep developing your “best practices”. Look at what the competition is doing.

4. Practice reasonable paranoia

Someone is always evaluating and grading you or coming for you. So practice reasonable paranoia.

Answer

This is a client you’d like to duplicate, who allows you to help them choose and qualify a friend or colleague and then warmly introduces you at a 3 way meal or on a 3 way appointment or conference call.
Once this process begins, it continually repeats.

So how does this apply to Advisors?

Even very successful Advisors say they are frustrated and frequently uncomfortable because there’s a problem. Nothing they try creates a consistent steam of quality introductions and first appointments.

They want a solution that is uncomplicated, efficient and permanent. The solution should also work quickly and enable Advisors to achieve significant and measurable increases in new warm qualified activity in as little as 60 days.

The first step is focusing on activating and energizing the existing network of warm, potential advocates.

They are the Advisors’ current qualified clients – the clients they want to duplicate. And Advisors will find that with the correct approach, these clients are very open to becoming champions who will help identify and connect Advisors to warm qualified prospects.

Key to this first step is how Advisors address clients’ overwhelming, predominant “worldview”. [Read Post 11/24]

This worldview refers to the fact that existing and potential clients are generally skeptical of Financial Advisors. Most Advisor marketing approaches don’t recognize the impact of this worldview or are not effective dealing with it.

If you’d like to hear more about “The 60 Day Rule”and “worldview” and “consistent, personally introduced, warm qualified introductions”, reach out. The initial step, to move the growth trajectory of your business to that really good place, is an exploratory phone call.

Those ten people need your service or what you have to sell or they want it. And if they love it, you win. If they love it, they’ll each find you more people – or a hundred or a thousand or, perhaps, just three. Repeat.

If they don’t love it, you need a new product or service. Start over.

Three years from now, this advice will be so common as to be boring. Today, it’s almost certainly the opposite of what you’re doing.

Edited from the post by Hall of Fame Marketer Seth Godin on April 02,2009.

Don’t resist learning about it because, for the experienced Advisor, for all Advisors, of all incomes, it can have a huge impact. It can be the game changer.

To learn about “free”, we tell Advisors to continue to do business as usual. But, take 10% of your time to do some research. Then, if it makes sense, conduct your own little pilot project.

(Note: We will be holding a FREE Conference Call on “The Concept of Free : The Cornerstone To Amazing Activity and Revenue Growth”. See bottom of page)

Today, there are Financial Advisors who freely share what they know -being of service, not sales. We know this because we’ve trained them.

These Advisors:

Practice the concept of free with their best clients, the clients they want to duplicate. These clients warmly introduce the Advisor to their qualified friends and colleagues. And the process repeats.

Have a pipeline consistently filled with warm qualified prospects.

Become remarkable.

Separate themselves from other Advisors.

Experience consistent revenue growth.

Build a framework for growth where many of their qualified clients will reciprocate and advocate for them.

Making “free” a foundational element of your mission is something to which clients and prospects respond. It sets your service and you apart from the rest.

Revenues will grow consistently.

It will simplify your business.

It will make you much more productive.

You will have way more control.

Don't forget! We will be holding a FREE Conference Call on Monday, January 23rd, 2017 at 1 pm EST. Topic: The Concept of "Free" the Cornerstone to Amazing Activity and Revenue Growth. To register, email us at matt@matthewbellis.com and we will send you the conference number and code.

Financial Advisors tell us and industry surveys indicate that Advisors are frustrated because nothing they try or do creates a consistent stream of qualified warm introductions and qualified first appointments.

They say they want a marketing approach that is uncomplicated and efficient. One that enables them to consistently achieve significant and measurable increases in new warm qualified activity and first appointments… so they can be in control of their business, instead of the other way around.

Well, it’s doable. It can happen within 60 days.

Maybe this will help:

The first step is focusing on activating and energizing your existing network of warm, potential advocates, rather than spending time on “cold” prospects.

So, who are an Advisor’s potential advocates? They are your current qualified clients – the clients you want to duplicate. And you’ll find that many are very open to becoming your biggest champions and will help you identify and connect to warm qualified prospects. (Post 1/19)

Key to this first step is how you address your clients’ overwhelmingly predominant “worldview”.

This worldview refers to the fact that people are generally skeptical of Financial Advisors. Most marketing approaches don’t recognize the impact of this worldview or are not effective dealing with it.

The next step is to develop your marketing story around this worldview. (Post 2/8)

Then, tell your marketing story to the clients you’d like to duplicate. (Post 3/15)

Put these steps together properly and you’ll be on your way.

However remember “The 60 Day Rule”.

Any marketing program worth it’s salt should feel right and create positive, measurable results within 60 days. If it doesn’t, you should stop what you’re doing.

Client Centric Marketing, a division of MB Marketing, Inc., teaches Advisors how to work with the qualified friends, family and colleagues of their most valuable clients, the clients they want to duplicate.